Chapter 65 - The Sinking of the North Ridge
The rain intensified, turning the forest floor into a sliding soup of red clay and decayed leaves. The diesel roar from the crawlers masked the sound of our descent as we slid down the embankment into the flume ravine.
The flume had been built in the 1880s to float virgin timber down from the high hollows, but where it met the limestone bluff, the timber had been replaced during the 1960s with eight-inch-thick reinforced concrete slabs. A steel catwalk hung suspended over the black, rushing water that drained from the upper creek directly into the mountain’s gut.
"Arthur," Sarah whispered, grabbing Dad's sleeve. "You take the winch house on the upper ledge. If Julian's men see us, you keep them from running that cable up any further. Tom and I have to go into the culvert."
Dad looked at her, his eyes steady now, the tremor in his hands completely gone. "You make sure she didn't spend thirty years of her life guarding a lie, Sarah."
"She didn't guard a lie, Arthur. She guarded this valley from fools like Vance."
Dad nodded once, turned without a word, and melted into the shadow of the hemlocks, his shotgun cradled against his ribs.
I followed Sarah onto the slick steel mesh of the catwalk. Below us, the water roared with an unnatural, hollow boom—not the sound of water running over gravel, but of a cataract falling into a bottomless chimney. The air down here was twenty degrees colder than on the ridge, smelling sharply of wet brine and machine oil.
At the far end of the catwalk, an iron door was set flush into the limestone wall, secured by a massive bronze hasp. Across its lintel, stamped into the concrete, were the words: *U.S. DEPT OF INTERIOR — HYDROLOGICAL SURVEY STATION 04.*
Sarah didn't hesitate. She shoved the iron key into the slot below the hasp.
It didn't turn easily. The metal screamed as sixty years of calcified mineral scale ground against the internal tumblers. I threw my weight against her shoulder, gripping the iron crossbar with both hands.
"Together," she grunted. "On three. One... two... three!"
We leaned in with our full weight. With a sickening, explosive *crack*, the lock snapped back. The heavy iron door swung outward by three inches, releasing a gust of air that nearly knocked us off the catwalk.
It was air from fourteen thousand feet down—hot, damp, smelling of ancient sulfur and compressed salt.
Inside, the tunnel was lit not by electricity, but by a continuous run of chemical luminescence tubes wired along the conduit lines—a cold, greenish-blue glow that revealed an endless flight of concrete steps descending at a steep sixty-degree pitch into the mountain.
Above us, from the ridge, came the sharp, twin cracks of a twelve-gauge shotgun.
*BOOM. BOOM.*
Julian Vance’s voice screamed over an amplifier, followed immediately by the staccato rip of automatic fire chewing through hemlock branches.
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"Arthur's bought us five minutes," Sarah said, stepping over the threshold into the tunnel without looking back. "If we aren't at the governor before the cable snaps, we won't need to climb back up."
***
